


Tonight You're Perfect

by hypnoticinsanity



Series: Loving You Without a Clue [1]
Category: Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Childhood Trauma, Falling In Love, M/M, Medical Procedures, Mutual Pining, Romantic Angst, Slavery, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers, Team Bonding, Trans Arcade, Trans Male Character, Trust Issues, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, dark themes, no violence described in great detail but gory injuries are, part of a series that will have a happy ending though!, tags and info will be updated as we get further in
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24660088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypnoticinsanity/pseuds/hypnoticinsanity
Summary: ** chapters will hopefully be posted regularly, probably not though. i'm synicalchaos on tumblr **The year is 2282. Exactly one year after the Mojave-renowned Courier offered Arcade into slavery. Today, the mighty Caesar will die. In his place, Lepidus, leaving nobody else in the Legion who can stand Arcade's snarky running commentary. If he was lucky, they'd kill him. If they were nice, they'd do it quick. But he's not lucky, and they aren't nice, and in precisely one week's time, he'll find himself sold into the hands of some slavers headed far from the Mojave. Up north. Two thousand four hundred and thirty three miles away from home.
Relationships: Deacon (Fallout)/Arcade Gannon, Deacon/Arcade Gannon
Series: Loving You Without a Clue [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1783000
Comments: 13
Kudos: 23





	1. 2282

**Author's Note:**

> After this chapter, I'm going to try to get ahead of myself with uploading the chapters, so say I have chapter 2 published, I'd only do it when I was mostly finished with chapter 3. Unsure how this strategy will work, but here's to hoping it does something! Please, absolutely comment if you like anything about this. I'm not too quick to post my writing, or even bother editing it

One year and a week ago, Arcade’s life was shattered into thousands of tiny, painful pieces. Courier Six. That was all he had to put to the face of the person who’d done it. He didn’t even know their gender, or their real name, if they had one. Why the hell had he trusted them at their word when they swore they had no intentions to actually work with Caesar? Why had he kept trusting them the countless times he found himself walking through those terrifying gates, directly into the mouth of the beast, up until the tipping point? He spent so much time scolding his past self, stewing in his own bitterness, he was sure he couldn’t trust anyone again. Especially not himself, and doubly not his own judgement. Not so long as there was a slave collar around his neck. 

One week ago, Caesar had died. Finally. Arcade was certain that the man had been the only one in the Legion that would put up with his sparkling personality, and when he died, Arcade would either be killed by the new leader, or at least given an opening to end his life himself. But no. No, because New Vegas hated him, perhaps. Or was it no, because the world hated him. Or maybe he'd just inherited all the bad karma that the Enclave itself had built up, and he had no chance to shed himself of it.

Two days ago, the new leader, Lepidus, had looked through him and ordered two Legionary guards to meet with some "traders". Obviously, they weren't any normal traders. Anyone dealing with the Legion couldn't possibly be. They were slavers, to put it plainly. Only interested in trading one slave for another. It was.. Well.. Bone-chilling, to watch the guards grab the younger, less deserving slave girl and drag her away in Arcade's place. Maybe he didn't want to be there, but at least as a man with an endless array of quips, they'd rather lock up than touch him like they would the girl. But he couldn't do anything about it, not with his hands tied, mouth gagged, and a syringe full of silvery green liquid being emptied into his arm. Silvery green liquid that took seconds to force his vision to black. 

The first time he woke up, he could hardly tell if he was actually conscious. Even when he blinked hard, nothing came into focus. It was just darkness, and the cold, hard floor beneath him. He felt an odd sensation though, in the building, he assumed he was in. It was shaking, just a bit, and he could hear noises. Some crunching, like gravel, but not under a human foot, but something much larger. Then, he felt the darkness drawing his eyes closed, and unconsciousness overwhelmed him again. 

Arcade came to a second time, head pounding and his body aching with the effort it took to push his weak frame up to a sitting position before he could open his eyes. He tried once, only to quickly squeeze them shut when the light of the sun blinded him and the rhythmic pounding in his skull grew worse. It felt like years, or was it seconds, until he was blinking slowly, letting the light hit his eyes longer each time. Finally, with his eyes adjusted, the world.. didn’t come into focus. _Shit._ Glasses. He squinted at the metal floor beneath him and felt around, grimacing at the dirt that came up on his palms when his fingers finally curled around the plastic frames. Dust caked the lenses, crumbling away easily when he weakly scrubbed at it with the corner of his shirt before slipping them back on his face. 

Arcade appeared to be in the back of a delivery truck, with small, barred windows in the sides. Light streamed in between the bars, tempting the blonde to pull himself up to peer out through the narrow opening. His hands grabbed at a piece of metal sticking out from the wall of the truck and he yanked himself up, regret bubbling up within him when he felt nausea take hold and his head began to spin worse than when he’d first tried to open his eyes. But even with his head pounding and his stomach churning dangerously, he scrambled to latch onto the bars of the window and pulled himself all the way up to stare outside at.. Nothing. And everything.

It sure as hell wasn’t the Mojave, if they were still in Nevada at all. It didn’t particularly look like that was the case either. No cacti, no desert, no Roman Legionaries. He had no idea where they were. He’d traveled with the Enclave Remnants when he was a kid, and he’d lived in the Mojave the rest of his life, and not once had he seen this part of the Wasteland. Not that he could remember, at least. He was about to let his forehead fall against the bars, feeling another wave of hopelessness wash over him, when the truck jerked forward suddenly. The blonde toppled sideways to the floor, unable to bring his arms up to stop his skull from cracking against the ground and forcing him back into unconsciousness. 

The next time he woke was just as painful, though this time, it seemed more likely due to being unable to eat or drink for however long he’d been out. It only took a few seconds for his vision to focus again, and his eyes were quick to land on three bottles of what looked to be dirty water, an apple, and a bag with Brahmin steak inside. He didn’t waste time worrying whether the food was poisoned--all the better for him if it was--and went for the water first, forcing his shaky hands to only drip small bits at a time onto his tongue. Even unpurified, he could claim it was the best feeling in the world right then, as the water soothed his cracked and dry throat, dampening the wave of dizziness that hit him again. 

He only drank half the bottle before moving onto the apple, treating it just as he had the water: small bites, one after the other. When the floor of the truck beneath him suddenly jerked to life and the world outside the window began to move, Arcade was flung back to the ground, just barely keeping the apple from touching the dirt that coated the ground. Deep breaths in and out. One.. Two.. And he was pushing himself up to a sitting position, even as the truck bounced along the presumably broken road below, and continued taking bites from the apple. Even eating slowly, he finished the apple off in what seemed to only be a few minutes, though it was hard to tell. In a few more minutes’ time, he was able to drink a third of what was left in the bottle of water to wash down the steak he’d managed to eat and keep down along with the apple. Already, he could feel relief washing through his body, soothing his writhing insides and allowing him to fall back willingly to let sleep take him. 

The third time he awoke, it didn’t hurt nearly as much. It wasn’t pleasant in the back of a dirty slaver truck, but the pain was no longer excruciating, and as his brain caught up to the rest of his body, he realized what had startled him to wake was a banging at the back doors of the truck. It was when he dragged himself to his feet to stagger towards the doors that he finally noticed the absence of the Legion slave collar around his neck. Of course, it had been replaced with another, a different type, Arcade could assume. But at least it wasn’t digging into his flesh, choking him and reminding him of just where he was when he so much as took too deep a breath. 

Before he could reach out to push at the doors, they swung open. Arcade first brought a hand up to shield his eyes from the sun streaming down on him, then squinted down at the slaver with a shotgun pointed up at him. He didn’t speak. The man below didn’t say anything at first either, just gestured for the doctor to step out of the truck and to the ground. Arcade did. And then, the slaver spoke, “Do your business, and do it fast. We have another three days to drive.” And Arcade did. 

\---

It was almost exactly closing on the third day when they seemed to be stopping for good. Three days that had taken on an endless cycle of eating and drinking the small rations the slavers threw at him, stopping once a day for a bathroom break, then sleeping through the night so long as the painful bumping of the truck wheels on the broken up road wasn’t too much to keep him up. All the time he spent alone in the back, Arcade had plenty of time to himself to think. And for once, he couldn’t imagine anything worse. Now that he was here, he could think about his past. The Legion, the Courier, the Followers, and the Remnants, the closest thing he had to family left, who he would never see again. And, of course, he could only wonder where it was he was being taken, in the back of a truck that seemed to have housed other slaves like him not so long ago. 

The vehicle had been unmoving for what Arcade guessed had been about ten minutes now, accompanied only by the patter of rain and loud, upset arguing between two of the slavers outside. A man and a woman, he assumed. The argument didn’t seem to be resolved, but rather interrupted by a third slaver, who spoke too quietly for Arcade to pick up, but at least it silenced the first two. What he could hear, however, was the sound of boots on gravel quickly approaching the back of the truck, and the click of a key in the padlock keeping him locked inside. 

As usual, the first thing his eyes landed on was the barrel of the rifle pointed up at him. His eyes never met with hers, only bounced up to the dark sunglasses once before slipping sideways to peer at the world around the truck. In the distance, he could see mountains obscured only partly by the dark storm clouds currently dumping rain upon their heads, and closer than the mountains were the small outlines of buildings that must have once belonged to a large city, if he could see them from so far away. Calloused fingers wrapped around his shoulder and dug in when a second slaver pulled him from the truck and angled his gaze away from the distant city. The view seemed so familiar. Perhaps a city important enough to be contained within one of the books Arcade got his hands on many years before. 

No longer distracted by the view, Arcade followed the second slaver willingly. Or perhaps simply obediently, with the first woman’s rifle pressed to his spine, and the warm steel of the slave collar digging into his skin. The rain falling from above seemed to grow heavier with every step. Water gathered in his hair, soaking through until drops were rolling down his forehead, drawing a line of water on the slope of his nose, and sliding from his eye to his chin. As though they were the ghosts of tears he’d long wiped away. 

His lab coat was just as wet as his hair by the time he finally stepped through the open door of what looked to be an outpost they’d stopped at. But just one sweep around the building corrected his assumptions immediately. It was not just an outpost, but a slave outpost, one that he could only guess was for trading them off for transportation. His arms curled tighter around his stomach as he stepped forward again at the push of the rifle. A row of three cells, each big enough for several slaves, lined one wall, and on the other, a doorway leading to rooms, likely for the slavers who stayed. Soft murmurs hit his ears from the slaves already inside, the sound quickly silenced by Arcade’s glance to the cages.

The man in front of him led him to the back of the building where another doorway led to a hallway splitting off into two rooms. The slaver sidestepped just as the woman behind Arcade shoved him forwards, sending him staggering into the hallway. He grabbed at the wall to steady himself right as the metal door in the frame slammed closed, locking him in. It was silent then, even the rain barely audible anymore. Whether the slavers outside were talking, arguing, or even yelling, Arcade couldn’t tell. A flickering bulb lit up the room to his left, illuminating a flimsy frame with a thin mattress thrown on top. Across the room was a wobbly wooden desk and stool. Above it, a window, or what used to be, with metal plates screwed over to remove any possible escape route. 

The doctor took a step towards the bed. Then a second, and a third. He’d barely tossed his soaked lab coat onto the desk before he yanked the chain of the light-bulb, letting darkness overwhelm the room. He collapsed on the mattress, his body far too sore from sleeping in the cold, hard truck. His shoes fell to the floor beside the bed with a soft thump, and he tucked his hands beneath his head as a makeshift pillow, not even bothering to remove his glasses before he squeezed his eyes shut. Sleep didn’t come immediately, but it approached slowly, allowing him just a moment for a final thought. 

A pre-war book of must-see American cities. He knew the view had been strikingly familiar. They had arrived in Washington D.C, America’s capital. And America’s capital was _at least_ two thousand miles from Nevada. Two thousand miles from home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He tilted his face to the sky, lips sealed shut as the water cascaded down, dirt rolling with it down his cheeks, chest, thighs, and into the drain. It seemed almost picturesque—like a man trapped without the sky finally freed, stepping out below the rain and tilting his head up to meet the droplets. The dried blood came off in flakes only when he dragged his thumb along the half-healed gash on his cheek. Slow and sure, he cleaned the wound on his cheek. Then, followed those on his legs, arms, and chest, until he was free of it all. Except, of course, the radiation. He shut the water off in one swift motion.
> 
> A beat passed before he lifted his hand from the dial and reached for the single towel hung on the wall. If he closed his eyes and rubbed at his hair gently, he could almost imagine he was back in the Old Mormon Fort, drying his hair while cleaning up after a long day. Julie wasn't far away, and he could practically hear the quiet buzzing of the other doctors engrossed in conversation.. "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: there is some brief descriptions of injuries, i'm not the best at writing so it isn't terribly triggering, but if you want to skip the worst part, skip from "Arcade’s eyes glossed over the slavers on the other side of the door," to the end of that paragraph :)

Arcade woke with a sour taste in his mouth and aching limbs, begging to let him sleep just a little longer on the worn mattress. But he couldn’t fall back asleep, trying to force it was futile, he knew well enough already. Light filtered into the room through the doorway from a barred window in the room across the hall. Curiously, Arcade slipped his shoes on and stepped across the hall to reach the second room, startled by both the size and contents. It appeared to be some sort of makeshift medical station, with a table, stocked first aid kits, and a toolbox full of medical instruments. In the corner, another doorway blocked by a curtain led to a small bathroom with not just a toilet, but a functioning sink, only slightly cracked mirror, and a shower-head positioned above a drain. He sure hoped it still functioned. 

It was the first time in over a year that Arcade had looked at his reflection. It wasn’t pretty, after several days without any running water or steadily provided meals. The bags beneath his eyes were startlingly dark against his skin, and his once blue eyes appeared almost grey, almost without any color at all. His hair was a mess, and from all the dirt caked in combined with rain from the night before, the platinum blonde was streaked with brown.

The loud clang of the metal door jerked him from his thoughts, drawing his attention back to the building he was in, and his purpose here. Though if the room was anything to go by.. perhaps they needed a doctor. A slave doctor. If so, the situation was still far from ideal, but he would be safe from torture and abuse, and he’d be able to make some other slaves’ lives less miserable, at least temporarily. 

He stepped out of the bathroom and crossed into the hallway, peering at the door with a raised eyebrow. His eyes dropped to the floor, where a pile of clothes had been tossed unceremoniously for him. With only a single beat of hesitation, Arcade reached down to scoop them up and step back into the doorway to the office. He sent a glance back to the bedroom, gaze falling upon his still wet lab coat. Slowly, his face set in acceptance, and he turned his back on the coat with a semblance of finality. 

\---

A black, mostly intact tank top, black boxers, and a pair of blue jeans with just a few tears in the fabric. It would be easier to avoid visible bloodstains with the black color scheme, both from medical work and his own body. He set the bundle in the bathroom sink before he turned to pull the curtain closed and step towards the showerhead. He stripped his torn and dirty pants from his legs, dropping them in the corner. His button-up shirt, boxers, and socks were quick to follow. His glasses, however, he set on the edge of the sink, safe from the dirty floor. 

The water that poured down from the showerhead was irradiated. Not enough to leave lasting effects, so long as Arcade showered quickly enough. It was cold too, not that Arcade had ever been able to use one connected to hot water himself. Still, he squeezed his eyes shut and stepped beneath the stream, letting the water work away at the layers of dirt and blood on his skin and deep within his hair. He lifted his hands to his hair first, dragging his fingers through the tangled clumps, gentle and persistent, until he could no longer feel the grainy bits of earth pressing against his scalp, leaving his hair both dirt and knot free for the first time in years. 

He tilted his face to the sky, lips sealed shut as the water cascaded down, dirt rolling with it down his cheeks, chest, thighs, and into the drain. It seemed almost picturesque—like a man trapped without the sky finally freed, stepping out below the rain and tilting his head up to meet the droplets. The dried blood came off in flakes only when he dragged his thumb along the half-healed gash on his cheek. Slow and sure, he cleaned the wound on his cheek. Then, followed those on his legs, arms, and chest, until he was free of it all. Except, of course, the radiation. He shut the water off in one swift motion.

A beat passed before he lifted his hand from the dial and reached for the single towel hung on the wall. If he closed his eyes and rubbed at his hair gently, he could almost imagine he was back in the Old Mormon Fort, drying his hair while cleaning up after a long day. Julie wasn't far away, and he could practically hear the quiet buzzing of the other doctors engrossed in conversation.. 

Tears welled up in the corners of Arcade’s eyes, threatening to fall if he didn’t get his act together quickly. He quickly moved from his hair to the rest of his body, tossing the towel over the still dripping showerhead and stepping towards the pile of clothes in the sink. With his left hand hovering over the tank top, he paused, and slowly lifted his right to his eyes, pressing his thumb and forefinger to his closed eyes and rubbing gently, each motion driving the thoughts further back. He let both hands fall to clutch the edges of the tank top with his second breath out. It was hardly torn, at least for something slavers were offering one of their slaves in an outpost such as this. One of the straps was nearly ripped through, but even that wasn’t much of a problem, so long as the other remained intact. 

The shirt fit snugly, framing his chest and hips in a way that had the doctor frowning at his reflection. The boxers were fine, at least, comfortable enough to sleep in at the end of the day, and the jeans fit similarly to the top: well enough to be uncomfortable. With a final breath in, Arcade turned away from the mirror, swiping his glasses and sliding them on as he stepped out of the bathroom and into the office. Before he could take another step into the hallway, the metal door slammed open and into the wall again, open long enough for Arcade to poke his head around the corner to see an unfamiliar slaver shove a bloodied girl in with him. He yanked the door shut again with just a few words directed to Arcade. “Fix her up. We will return for her at dusk. Any mistakes or mishandling and you’ll regret it.” 

A spike of disgust flashed through him when the slaver’s implication registered in his mind, enough to curl his lip instinctually at the closed door. His expression softened when he looked at the poor girl who had backed up against the door, staring at him with wide, frightened eyes. He gestured gently with his hand for her to follow him into the office, turning and striding back into the room to wait. It took only a moment for her to appear in the doorway, then another two before she actually limped in and braced herself on the table awkwardly. Arcade did his best to smile reassuringly, though if he’d had poor social skills  _ before _ being forced into slavery, he sure hadn’t developed any more. 

“Can you climb up on the table so that I can examine you fully? I’m not going to hurt you.” He spoke as gently as he could muster, trying to find some way to begin to prove to the girl that he was sincere, and also very, very gay. She nodded slowly, swinging her right arm around to brace on the metal table and push up, not quite succeeding until Arcade used one hand to help her the rest of the way, then pulled his hand back as soon as she settled on the surface. Her arms curled tightly around her chest in an almost defensive way as the rest of her seemed to curl in. The doctor didn’t dare touch her again, but instead, extended his right hand cautiously. 

“My name is Arcade Gannon. I’m just a doctor. Well, medical researcher, really. My bedside manners aren’t quite on par enough for people to want me to treat them, but I can assume you don’t have anyone better to pick from here,” he rambled, words coming out in a rush he’d kept internal since the day he was handed over to the Legion. He couldn’t help but cringe inwardly at his own awkwardness, though the girl seemed to relax ever so slightly the longer he spoke. Finally, she let her arms fall slowly, going limp at her sides with her palms on the table. 

“I’m Beatrice,” she whispered finally, voice nearly breaking when she did. 

“That’s a beautiful name. Beatrice. Can you tell me where you’re from?” Arcade spoke as he moved towards his supplies, digging around for longer than he would’ve liked to find all that he needed. He began on her left arm first, unwrapping bloody bandages from where they were wound tightly around marred skin. 

“I-I’m from the Commonwealth. In Boston. Just.. Just a few days ago I was in Goodneighbor for a night out. I don’t get those too often. And as soon as I was out of sight of the front gate, going to meet up with my friend, these dogs attacked me. That’s where most of these injuries came from. But when they were all dead, those damned slavers jumped me, and I was already hurt so bad, they just.. They..” Beatrice choked on a sob that rose in her throat and let her head fall down and to the right, so Arcade could no longer see her face. He was pretty sure she was crying anyway. 

“I’m sorry, Beatrice. I—" he breathed out a humorless laugh. "I know that probably isn’t much help to hear, since there’s nothing I can really do,” Arcade said, fingers working to clean the wound with as little pain to the poor girl as he could manage. She didn’t even flinch at the string of antiseptic. “But I can imagine how jarring this all is for you, and I wish I could tell you it got better.” 

“You.. You aren’t with them. You’re a slave too.” Arcade’s eyes flew up to Beatrice’s face when her right hand lightly brushed against the slave collar around his neck. He smiled again, this time bitter and ingenuine, and nodded. “Arcade, am I.. Am I going to die like this? A slave?” 

She was crying harder again, staring down at the doctor with a pleading gaze as her fingers tightened on the collar. Arcade coughed as the metal pressed against his windpipe and moved one hand up to carefully pull her fingers away so he could breathe properly. “Honestly? I don’t know. I know it doesn’t look bright, but you… You’re young. You have a shot at escaping someday. Soon, hopefully. If you’re careful, and if you get some help. You could get back to your friend in Boston.”

In truth, he didn’t believe it. He’d seen hundreds of Legion slaves fail to escape, and watched as they were crucified for their actions. He’d seen others before his own enslavement with bombs strapped to their necks, had to shift his eyes away as they were blown to bloody bits of human flesh on the ground. And yet.. He’d seen child slaves too stubborn to let hope die, and he’d caused enough of a stir for them to slip away, unnoticed. And he could remember vividly, a girl, no older than thirteen, running into the Old Mormon Fort with a deactivated collar that she’d rewired herself, begging for medical aid and to get the damn thing off. So perhaps, he didn’t believe there was any hope for himself, but he had to believe in Beatrice, so she could at least  _ try _ . 

\---

Arcade pushed down the sinking feeling in his chest as he watched a slaver pull Beatrice through the metal door roughly, and he did his best to ignore the dread settling within him when the door was shut again with a clang. Even as young and sharp as she was, he knew there was little hope for her escape, no matter what he’d said earlier. He thought again of the girl he’d replaced a few days earlier. And even further back, the young boys taken by the Legion, forced to fight as soldiers with no hope of ever returning to their families, if they even survived the battles. 

If each and every one of them stood little chance against the monsters keeping them imprisoned, then for Arcade, he was certain there was none at all. He had no real home to return to, no family, no friends who would care if he lived or died. Hell, he stood no chance of making it back to the Mojave anyway. Chances were, if he magically got out now, he’d stumble right into danger, and it’d be over for him anyway. He’d been so certain that he had already accepted his fate, to die a slave, but as the doctor sunk to his knees on the concrete floor, a realization hit him like the truck he’d arrived in.  _ I’m not ready to die. _

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he tuned in to a shallow thumping, the noise quickly filling his ears just as quickly as he let his forehead touch the ground. It took several seconds too long for him to recognize the sound as his own heartbeat overwhelming his senses. He was dimly aware, too, of how his body had begun to shake. His shoulders trembled as he pulled them up, closer to his head. His hands curled into fists that he pressed against the rough floor, bitten and uneven nails digging into the thick, scarred skin on his palms. 

Hot, salty tears traced lines down his cheeks, from the corners of his eyes to his jaw. The sound of one falling to the floor was near silent, the second didn’t differ, nor did the third, fourth, fifth. Through blurry, tear-filled eyes, Arcade stared at the darkened stone where the drops had fallen, barely making a dent in the dirt on the ground, and a real sob rippled through his body for the first time in.. In.. Oh god, since when did crying hurt this much?

\---

Light was no longer filtering in through the wooden slats that made up his room when Arcade tuned into the loud banging at the metal door, different to earlier, when the slavers had simply thrown Beatrice in with him. He rose from the bed slowly, his shoulders bunched up around his ears and fingers curled into fists defensively. Cautiously, he made his way to the door and peered out into the hall, watching as the metal door slammed into the wall once more with a final clang. 

Arcade’s eyes glossed over the slavers on the other side of the door, paying them no mind when he spotted the man they clutched between them. He was injured, and injured badly. One foot dragged behind him just slightly at a worrying angle, the bottom of his jeans mangled and torn, revealing just as mangled flesh beneath the fabric. Dried blood was caked along his arms and face, and from the gash down his right arm, fresh blood oozed out and over the trails already left behind. His white shirt was stained red and brown, just as the skin visible below the torn clothing was. Blood dripped trails down the man’s face, missing his eyes by an inch, and another line of blood ran from his nose to his mouth. 

What had once been a frame for sunglasses was still perched on the man’s nose, though the dark plastic in one eye had been shattered completely, and the other side was cracked irreparably. Arcade had seen it all before, back with the Followers, people with all sorts of injuries like this. But when he finally met the other man’s gaze, his heart seemed to stop for a beat or two. One piercing blue eye behind the broken glasses, calculating and observant, even half dead with a slave collar snapped around his neck. 

The slavers shoved the man forward then, the one without a bandanna around his mouth sneering down at him until the door was shut just as loudly as it was opened. Tentatively, Arcade stepped into the hallway, and kneeled down beside the man that’d ended up on his hands and knees, breathing heavily. He startled and lost his balance when his head snapped up to stare at him with that blue-eyed gaze and a satisfied, though pained, grin. 

“Hey there, handsome,” he rasped, and it was all Arcade could do to dive forward and catch his head before he hit the floor. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it took a while to get out! i'm just going one chapter at a time, and i have one of my best friends beta-ing for me now. i hope you enjoyed!


End file.
